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Saturday, January 10, 2015

In which I melt into a bit of a stress puddle... but only briefly...

So... Lots of progress here, but this past week has been a giant ball of stress. We finished the interior formatting and final edit on Monday, and were hoping to order proofs that same day or Tuesday morning, but then it took longer to get the final cover art file than expected (you can only get the final image once you have finalized page numbers and you can't have final page numbers until you've finished all your interior formatting and edits).

I was under the impression (perhaps through misunderstanding) that it would only take a day to get my final file once I informed the design folks of the final page count. I informed them of the count on Monday morning, they weren't back in the office until Tuesday so I figured I'd have it by the end of the work day on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, but I just got it yesterday (Friday) morning. Which had me stressing out all week.

Keep in mind, misunderstanding about timing or not, I should have given myself way more lead time with this whole thing, so it's my fault that all of this is coming back to bite me in the ass. Still, knowing that it's my own fault didn't make it any less stress inducing.

So, yesterday was the day I got to hit submit on all the files, and they were approved by createspace in about 10 hours. Upon approval, I immediately ordered a proof copy for the fastest available shipping option. Which will arrive on Tuesday. (Granted that's a day longer than usual due to MLK day, but still...) I am now having a panic attack about getting the print books here in time for the launch.

The proof arrives on Tuesday the 13th. Let's say there's nothing wrong with it (although I've already spotted one pagination error that I somehow missed so I know that's not true--but let's pretend that there's not a single error), I will hit approve and immediately ship 100 copies (27 to sign for backers and the rest for the launch on the 23rd) of the book to myself. Those will arrive on Saturday the 17th at the earliest. That would probably be fine.

However, as mentioned, I know there's an issue that needs to be corrected so I will have to fix that (I've already fixed it in the root file, but I'm going to wait until I've seen the proof and make sure I catch everything else before I update the interior file on createspace), and then I will submit it again, and then it will take createspace another 10-24 hours to approve the files. Once that's done, I will hit print (assuming that there were no major formatting changes like margins etc that would need to be confirmed in another physical proof), but chances are good that means I'm not ordering the print until Wednesday the 14th at the earliest, which means the books won't arrive until Monday the 19th at the earliest. For the launch that's happening on Friday the 23rd.

Which is fine. As long as nothing goes wrong. If anything goes wrong, I'm screwed. And of course there's always the chance that customs will decide to hold up the books for some reason...

I'm cutting it very close.

And apparently I really needed to spew this at someone. So thanks for reading this if you've gotten this far.

In addition, I really thought I was going to have time to get all the kickstarter backer rewards distributed before the launch, but I'm now beginning to doubt that. I will still try, and honestly, things that aren't going to be signed will probably get to people pretty quickly, but doing all of this alone is a bit overwhelming. I now understand why people hire squads of people to help them fill rewards.

It's all totally doable, it's just going to take longer than I had hoped.

Yeah, so that's a direct dump from my brain to the page. And please please please, note that none of this is a complaint. I'm still so very very excited about this whole thing. I'm just freaking out a little bit too. :-)

I hope that everyone is off to a happy start to their new year.

I leave you with another look at the ridiculous book trailer I made the other day:

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About Me

Virginia is a full time writer currently residing in the southern arctic circle, ah... er... I mean Manitoba. The first story she remembers writing was about a dragon and her blanky-blanky. She was young enough that the entire thing is written in crayon. She hopes that her writing has improved somewhat since then, but she still has that story to use as a comparison when needed.
When she's not writing she can be found dangling from rock faces, trudging through canyons with a fifty pound backpack, running through the wilderness with her dog, or engaging in other forms of outdoor relaxation.